AKKADIAN ROOTS OF MODERN SEMITIC LANGUAGES

Dated at 2360 BCE, Sargon of Akkad eclipsed the Sumerian kingdoms along the Tigris and Euphrates. In Akkadian SALIMUM ALLAKUM means “peace will come.” Today, even among Turkic peoples of central Asia, the common Arabic greeting has been adopted into the local culture as one word: SALOMALEIKUM–“peace be upon you.”  It is nearly the same in Kyrgyzstan, the first western neighbor of China: ASALAMU ALEYKUM (two words).  But those are not native to those Turkic people, either.  They inherited them when they adopted the Muslim religion of the Arabs, who were and are Semitic. 

 

A Grammar of Akkadian (Second Edition)
by John Huehnergard, Einsenbruns, 2005.

The word for “seven” in Akkadian is SEBE.  It has not changed much in over 4000 years. The Indo-Europeans found it convenient. The word “number” comes from “name-bearer” and these early peoples, Semitic and Indo-European, shared a margin where the Hittites met the Akkadians. The earlier Sumerians had their own merchant colonies within Hittite cities and it was the Sumerians who invented the naming of quantities.  Everyone else stopped with “one, two, many.” When the Akkadians conquered Sumeria, they adopted the cuneiform script and much else that went with it.  The Akkadians borrowed words from the Sumerians, also a common occurrence, among them those for Crown, Palace, and Scribe. 

Dog was KALBUM like the modern “Caleb” a man’s name in the Bible or “kalib” in modern Arabic. 

House was BITUM like the later root “beth” as in Bethlehem or Elizabeth. It is seen the second letter of our alphabet: Beta from the Phoenician letter which was a pictograph of a house.  Their letters were called Ox, House, Camel, Delta, … as in modern Hebrew:  Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth.

The common Arabic man’s name HABIB (beloved) is found in the Akkadian word KABTUM.  Like the Indo-European languages, the Semitic have a tie from the aspirated Ha to the harsher (velar) Ka. We see it in Latin, Spanish and Italian CARA which are the English WHORE and German HURE with French in the middle with CHER.  K-H is also found in words common to Finnish and Hungarian. 

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